Historic Fiction

The Decemberists rewrite history with their first major-label release

November 09, 2006|By Los Angeles Daily News.

Several years ago, Colin Meloy stumbled on "The Crane Wife" in the children's section of a bookstore where he worked.

Meloy, the leader of experimental pop outfit The Decemberists, says he "was struck by the beauty and simplicity" of the picture book about a poor man who rescues an injured crane, nurses it back to health and releases it. Never mind that the old Japanese folk tale turns tragic. He was convinced it would make a good song.

Better still, the story was reimagined years later as a song cycle contained in The Decemberists' widely praised Capitol debut, "The Crane Wife."

Music blog Pitchfork hails the new disc as a "folk-prog monsterpiece."

The New York Times calls it "one of the most accomplished albums of its kind this year ... not that there are many albums of its kind." And Rolling Stone regards its contents as 10 of "the catchiest Civil War-era folk-rock tunes of the year."

All this praise suggests "The Crane Wife" isn't a concept album but rather a series of different stories set to a variety of musical genres, from pop to Irish jig and klezmer.

Meloy, who grew up in Helena, Mont., and majored in English with an emphasis in creative writing, says composing dark, overly imaginative songs is his niche. Not like his novelist sister, Maile Meloy, whose books "Liars and Saints" and "The Family Daughter" are more grounded in reality.

Creative writing and music haven't always gone hand in hand for Meloy.

"They felt pretty separate for a while," he says from the Portland, Ore., home he shares with his illustrator wife, Carson Ellis, and their 7 1/2-month-old son, Hank. "English is what I did at school. Music is what I did at home when I was procrastinating essay writing."

Before forming The Decemberists in 2001, Meloy fronted the alt-country band Tarkio. When Meloy came to Portland, he performed as a solo artist and eventually fell into the singer-songwriter crowd, which he didn't feel much allegiance with.

"Most of the people I was playing with were really into the Shawn Colvins and Ani DiFrancos of the world, and I just wasn't into that," he says. "I was still into my Robyn Hitchcock and stuff like that.

"So, it wasn't until I started meeting people in the DIY-indie scene that I really started to feel like I had a home."

Over the years, The Decemberists have risen from cult favorites to indie music world superstars with their off-kilter pop. It seems signing to Capitol had no effect on the band's creativity.

"Why would they ever try to change us into a Justin Timberlake? They signed us because they wanted to be involved in what we had already built, and it was something that's best left unchanged," Meloy says.

"If they had tried to turn us into a top 10 single-cranking machine, then I think we would inevitably lost a lot of fans that way."